Press the Panic Button in FeedDemon To Reduce RSS Stress

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Since I was offline the previous week because of the Bangalore BarCamp, a couple of thousand unread news stories and blog posts accumulated in my RSS reader.

When there's too much stuff to read, I generally mark all items as read and hop over to Techmeme River or Scoble link blog to catch up with all the important stories.

But this time, a more elegant solution was in store - the Panic button.

Nick has added a brilliant "Panic" feature in FeedDemon 2.6 that automatically triggers where you have lot of stuff to catch up. It will allows you to hide all unread items (by marking them as read) that are older than a certain time.

So you reduce RSS stress but won't miss reading stuff that was published most recently.

Upload a Batch of Images to Flickr.com from the Desktop

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Yahoo! today released an all new uploader software (v 3.0) that lets you organize and upload pictures to your Flickr account right from the desktop.

You can very easily add titles, tags, set privacy options or arrange your pictures in Flickr sets while staying offline.

 

Related: Publish Pictures on Flickr from Windows Gallery

And as the Flickr uploader is processing one batch of photographs, you can add more jobs to the queue. Pretty impressive and big improved over the previous version.

Flickr Uploadr 3.0 is compatible with both Windows and Mac. Following are the direct download links:

For Windows: FlickrUploadr-3.0b2.exe
For Mac: FlickrUploadr-3.0b2.dmg

Discussion on Flickr Forums | Thanks Christina Warren

Make Internet Phone Calls From Regular Telephones (Without PC)

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Internet phone calls (VoIP), that you make from the computer to other landline or mobile phone numbers using software like Skype, are generally cheaper but then they require a computer and an Internet connection.

Jajah earlier made some good start and allowed users to make long distance phone calls over the Internet using regular phone lines - a computer was required only for arranging the call - the actual voice conversation would happen over traditional phone lines.

Now they have gone a step further with Jajah Direct that completely eliminates the need for a computer to make internet phone calls.

With Jajah Direct, you can call any long distance landline or mobile phone by just dialing a local number, then enter the number you want to call and Jajah connects you. And since it's a VoIP call, the calling rates remain low.

And unlike the Skype phones, you require no special hardware to use Jajah Direct - it works with every phone that has a dialpad.

Jajah Direct is currently available only in US, UK and Israel but Shaherose (of Jajah) did confirm that they will offer this service in India soon.

Generate A Human Calendar with Pictures of Real People

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Craig Giffen is working on an interesting project called Human Calendar where the calendar grid is actually made up from photographs of real people looking at each other. They are all friends of Craig.

You can either generate a monthly calendar (like the one above) or a dynamic short calendar that automatically shows the current day and date - perfect for sidebars in websites.

Related: Human Clock for Blogs [via delicious]

Track Exactly How You Spend Time At The Computer

Can Be Revealed By Their Cell Phone - Without You Even Touching It

Internet and computers are addictive. In a survey, 65 percent of Americans said they spent more time with a computer than with their spouse.

So how do you exactly spend your time at the computer ? Are you doing something productive or just whiling away time that could otherwise be utilized for better things. What apps are you using most frequently ? What websites and blog consume most of your time ?

You will get answers to all these questions and more through RescueTime, a free tool for PC and Mac that's more like having Google Analytics for your computer.

RescueTime is a free tool that runs in the background and keeps a track of all your computer activities. Privacy experts may frown but all this data is uploaded every 30 minutes to the web and you can check your computer usage reports online from any computer. (see screenshot)

Since RescueTime is web+desktop solution, it can be used to track usage across computers (like home and work).

You can also selectively delete certain websites and software apps from your usage history. Or just add them to the ignore list and RescueTime would stop monitoring them.

Related: Shut Down Websites That Waste Time

Update: If you are worried about data that RescueTime is transferring from your computer to the web, check the log files available at the following location:

Windows XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\RescueTime.com\logs\pending

Windows Vista:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\RescueTime.com\logs\pending

Golden Triangle Suggests How People Scan Google Search Pages

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This visual heat map suggests how web searchers navigate scan the search results shown on Google pages and which areas on the Google web page tend to get the maximum attention.

The areas highlighted in red are noticed by almost Google user but the visibility decreases drastically for search results that show up below the fold (i.e., search results at position 5 or below).

Like the letter "F", human eyes read the content at the top in a horizontal manner and then travel vertically along the left side of the results.

Most of the Google ads in the right sidebar largely go unnoticed (compared to the top organic search results) while the reverse is true for the horizontal Google ad unit placed at the top of search results - it probably offers the highest conversion rate for advertisers.

Full details of this Google Eyetracking study is available on Eyetools.

Related: How to Draw Heat Maps

An SBI Credit Card Could Get You an Unlocked iPhone

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Much before the impending official launch of Apple’siPhone in India, lot of grey market unlocked phones are available in big markets across the country.

According to Apple sources, iPhone will hit India only in 2008 in partnership with a local player.

But Mumbai-based online shopping site Deals4all.net is selling the iPhone to all SBI Credit Card holders for Rs. 26,000 much to the surprise of Apple Inc. The phone can even be used across all mobile networks.

But the legitimacy of the offer is doubted since Apple won’t unlock iPhones for India and that too for a relatively less known shopping site. And these phones would even won’t have any warranty attached with them.

The biggest surprise is that the fact company such as SBI which has a strong brand identity is selling such products. But SBI officials claim that the responsibility lies with Deals4all and not with them.

But die hard fans of iPhone, they are surely not complaining. via

Notes from Barcamp Bangalore 5

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Some interesting updates from Barcamp Bangalore 5:

1. Google could soon introduce Facebook-like privacy options in Orkut wherein members can limit access to their photo albums and scrapbooks to only known contacts (friends, friends of friends, etc). Currently your Orkut profile, scrapbook and other stuff is visible to all other Orkut users.

2. After announcing plans to retire Yahoo! 360°, other less popular Yahoo! services may follow suit including Yahoo! Ourcity and Yahoo! Mash.

3. One of the top queries on Google web search engine is "yahoo.com". Probably a lot of people see no difference difference between the address bar and the search box in the web browser. [related: Google Dell Deal]

4. Though Yahoo! may have no plans to build a product that rivals Google Docs, they are probably working on something similar to Google Apps. [Yahoo! recently acquired Zimbra.]

5. This Christmas, you can expect some new mobile phones from LG and other vendors that will sport features you may have never seen anywhere before. CNN is right.

6. Google is actively working to increase their level of interaction with the SEO and search community in India. A lot of companies and individuals, who do SEO and related stuff here, are very active on Digital Point and WebMasterWorld forums but not sure if there's any joint effort in the form of search events or conferences.

7. Wwigo (webcam wherever I go) is a free application that turns your Nokia mobile phone into a webcam for your laptop computer. Wwigo currently supports Bluetooth (no USB connections) and works on all Symbian devices. Details here.

8. If you enjoy listening to amateur Indian music, consider spending some time onMuziboo.com. It has a good collection of MP3 songs that are not ripped from Bollywood movies but recorded by amateur artists and bathroom singers. You can also upload your own audio files to Muziboo.

9. Taazza.com aggregates news headlines from all popular news sources and adds context - for instance, you can learn more about the personalities and places mentioned in the story without leaving Taazaa. Still in development stages.

10. Jerry, Mohan, Alagu, Prasanna, Sanjukta and Sridhar were kind enough to live blog my session on Blogging. Mayank is planning to launch a network of technology blogs - that could be India's second blog network after Instablogs.

11. Radio Verve is probably the only Internet radio station in India and extremely impressive - you can listen to music (English as well as regional language channels) on the RadioVerve website 24x7.

12. Companies that rely on online advertising for revenue are not too worried about things like AdBlock because only a very small percentage of users (read geeks) are aware of them.

Video Demo of Amazon Kindle Book Reader

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If you visit the Amazon.com homepage today, all you see is a letter from Jeff Bezos promoting the just launched Kindle Book Reader with a screen that emulates a piece of paper.

Other than reading books, Amazon Kindle can also help you read blogs and digital editions of newspapers and magazines. There's no support for reading Adobe PDF files in Kindle but you can view Word documents and pictures.

The very surprising thing is that you'll have pay a monthly rent to Amazon for every blog that you want to read on Kindle. For instance, Scobleizer will cost $.99 per month if you read it on Kindle.

You will have to pay Amazon for reading even your Word Documents or viewing your personal pictures on Kindle. You will first have to email that text or doc file to a special email address which converts it into a Kindle compatible format and then it become available on Kindle. Total cost - $.10.

Here's a promotional video demo of Adobe Kindle e-Book reader incase you are interested in the details and other feature of this device:

Fill Dates in Outlook Using Natural English

Simple & Powerful tools built on top of Office 365 / SharePoint 2010

When you are creating a new task or scheduling an appointment in Microsoft Outlook, you can assign dates to those events in two different way - either use the drop-down calendar (standard method) or save some time and use standard English phrases (as if you were telling that date to a friend over phone).

For instance, you can say "next Tuesday" or "day after tomorrow" or "now" and Microsoft Outlook will automatically calculate and fill in the relevant date for you.

Other than date, you can also type holiday names like "Christmas" or "Independence Day" and Outlook will substitute it with the corresponding date from the holiday calendar.

Microsoft Outlook also accepts simple expressions like "day three of next month" or "today + 12 days" - just tab out the date field and it's done. Google Calendar and Remember The Milk also accept natural language date queries.

Related: Google Calendar vs Yahoo! Calendar